Ask the Author: Stephanie Saulter
Answered Questions (3)
Stephanie Saulter
Ancestry. I'm descended from a range of ethnicities and nationalities, not all of which are common in the Caribbean. We know that such-and-such a great-great grandparent came from Portugal, or Scotland, but we don't know why.
Stephanie Saulter
Bal, Gaela and Gabriel are all back in Regeneration! And there's a new member of the family: Gabriel's little sister, Eve. After the events of Gemsigns, Bal and Gaela decided to leave London for a while - mostly to shield Gabriel from all the attention that resulted, and give him as normal a childhood as possible. They were living in the mountains near Reginald's place in Wales during the events of Binary. Regeneration takes place eight years later, and they've been back for some time. Gabriel is seventeen now, in college but also working for Thames Tidal Power, a revolutionary new energy company - it uses the tidal turbines and quantum storage technology developed by the gillungs, and desired by everyone else. His parents run a small grocery and café business near their former home in the Squats (now rechristened Riveredge Village), where Bal's formidable culinary skills are put to good use. Gaela also works as a security consultant, battles occasional bouts of synaesthesia and most of all focuses on raising, and protecting, Eve ... who is just as extraordinary a child as Gabriel was.
Stephanie Saulter
I wanted to let some time pass so that we could see how the events of Gemsigns had affected the lives of the characters and the world that they live in. It enabled me to write Binary against a backdrop of continuing social change, and it also allowed me to alter the tone a bit from Gemsigns - Binary reveals a lot more about the histories of Aryel and Zavcka, and there's a sense of the past needing to be reckoned with in a more direct way than was possible in the immediate crisis of Gemsigns. Setting Binary three and a half years later also let me bring in new characters in a more natural way; and not have it be too weird for some old characters to not be around. As for what happened in between: the 3rd book, Regeneration, sheds light on where some of them went and what they were up to!
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